


Francis Meets An Angel (Sort-of)

by Shachaai



Series: Vampire AU [2]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-13
Updated: 2011-09-13
Packaged: 2017-11-07 16:36:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/433220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shachaai/pseuds/Shachaai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Francis has a run-in with some of his sire's followers, and finds unexpected shelter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Francis Meets An Angel (Sort-of)

**Author's Note:**

> Some backstory stuff for Francis. Guns again, but less than usual. Ish.

__ Francis has lived too long to believe in God – or so he tells himself as he watches the weight of the world turn, year after year, decade after decade. Slowly, the centuries slip by – oh, not yet enough that he cannot keep track of them; he is not so old, and the French town that had birthed him is still standing, his family home. Francis is older than most of his ilk but still younger than a substantial amount, living carefully, quietly when the need arises and the world turns itself (as it ever does like clockwork) upside-down. People are born; they disagree and argue and go to war, claiming land, sovereignty and supremacy. People die, speared through on the battlefield for the crows to feast on, heads cut off and tossed to screaming masses, knives through ribs and poison in drinks. Kings and queens, beggars and bastards, courts and politics and merchants and workers and priests, all of them stuck in a pattern repeated again and again and _again._

God would not repeat a pattern that so obviously does not work.

There is no God. Perhaps –

Francis remembers being young – young and human and impressionable, and the stories he’d heard people chatter about in the town when he’d slipped free of his lessons and escaped for the day. Merchants who’d spoken to sailors voyaging to and from the New World, bringing back spices and strange fruits and gold, soldiers who spoke of old empires, rising empires, fleets of boats with billowing white sails and rows of knights dressed in silver that glowed under Jerusalem’s sun. For the Glory of God in all the world around them, in the blue sky and the green grass and the plentiful harvest. The snow on the tops of mountains that never melted, birdsong in the morning and the way Francis’ horse rode as swift as the wind when given rein, hooves running on to the horizon that seemingly held no end. There had been a God then, of childish faith and vaulted ceilings and endless sky, a pearl rosary wound through his small fingertips and the stories of the Blessed Virgin he’d always imagined with his own mother’s blue eyes.

Perhaps God had died of boredom somewhere along the way. Been there, done that, watched it all destroy itself time after time, ripping all the _mystery_ out of it.

There’s a majesty to it all still, though, even in the destruction. The scale of devastation just keeps growing as the years wind on, wondrous in its persistence. There are still unseen parts of the world that remain undamaged – and so Francis voyages to them before time turns on them, before those of his kind who’d happily stake him through for his crimes can catch him up. He has the spread of forever to run in now. 

He has the spread of forever to be caught in, as well – and caught he is.

They find him one winter, in bitter January, nursing a two-day headache from Hogmanay celebrations and yet still smiling sweetly at the girls sashaying down the evening streets of Edinburgh. They giggle when he greets them and hide their blushing faces behind their bonnets; Francis keeps his smile until they’re out of sight, and then lets his eyes narrow at the three sharp gazes watching him from the shadows of the alleys. So many vampires, so very still, bought and bribed and threatened onto his sire’s side. The legion in the cold.

(Couldn’t they have waited until _after_ his hangover had worn off?)

“F-Francis Bonnefoy,” one starts behind him – and Francis turns, lazy-slow, to see a pale stripling of a _boy_ standing there, a gun held between two quivering hands pointed at Francis’ chest. So they’re Turning teenagers now. 

Francis idly wonders whether it’s silver or holy water capsules in the gun. Hopefully it’s silver – shaking as much as he is the child-vampire would surely crack capsules open, dripping burning water down his hands and arms. Children should not be burned for an adult’s mistakes. “Bonsoir.”

“Fr-rancis Bonnefoy,” the child’s stutter is almost adorable – but it’s better when he draws a cold breath in and steadies his nerves, straightening his shoulders and back. However, he’s looking at Francis’ chest instead of his face; that’s somewhat off-putting, although in the boy’s defence he only _does_ stand as high as Francis’ breastbone. “Your presence has been requested on the continent by our Master,” the _charming_ look on the boy’s face says what he thinks of using the term, “and sire, for terrible crimes committed against the coven, and -”

“Are you new?” Francis asks him.

The boy stutters to a halt. And _stares._ (His eyes are a very washed-out blue – they suit the weather, and Francis’ declining mood. So much for an auspicious start to the year.) “What?”

Francis smiles again, affable, and finally rises from his slouch against the wall beside them. “This is the first time you’ve been asked to retrieve someone, oui?” A hesitant nod – this is a test for the boy. “A pleasure to meet you. May I ask your name?” 

“…Raivis,” says the boy. Doubtfully. The gun in his hands droops.

“Some advice for you then, Raivis.” Francis saunters closer to the other vampire, keeping his smile and flicking some of his long hair back over his shoulder – really, the cold is making it so _brittle._ Raivis looks up at him, curious. “When you are sent out to retrieve people by your sire, you _shoot_ them before explaining yourself. Somewhere crippling, but non-vital. They’re more likely to stay still.”

“Oh,” says Raivis – before apparently remembering the gun in his hands, looking down at it. _“Oh-_ ”

Francis slams the boy’s head into the wall and runs.

It’s a shame – Francis dislikes hurting children, truly, but no-one taught to use a weapon to hurt is really entirely a child anymore. There are far worse fates (for both humans and vampires) than a bruised head and/or concussion, so Francis flees Edinburgh with a heart light of guilt – and two vampires on his tail, Raivis left behind in the alley where he’d fallen. Francis carries the child-vampire’s gun in his jacket (opportunism is less of a character trait and more a basic element of survival) and heads south, hoping to hide in the more populated cities that way before catching a ship heading _anywhere_.

He gets shot in the leg shortly after crossing the border.

It hurts – oh, G- _sacré putain de merde _it hurts, the bullet going into Francis’ thigh and lodging itself there, silver-bright and _burning._ The wound refuses to heal over the silver bullet and so Francis _bleeds,_ dizzy in the head as he ties a tourniquet and keeps running. He’s stronger and older and _better_ than his pursuers, and will be damned if he’ll let himself be caught be people who are clearly so _inferior_ to him in every way.

(He had sworn the night he left the coven: the only way they’re taking him back there again is when he’s dead. And he has very little desire to be accommodating and _die_ anytime soon; there are far too many beautiful fluttering hearts in the world for him to leave them all bereft. Also, one of his older acquaintances owes him a new pair of shoes after a particularly dire run-in with a chicken.)

South, south – Francis heads for the cities but finds himself out in the countryside instead, weaving through smaller towns and small country estates (still _bleeding_ ; he has tried to withdraw the bullet himself but it burns his hands and, hissing, he withdraws every time). He is a few days ahead of his hunters, he thinks, and so he stops to rest for a while, a little while, in a town’s tavern, dulling his leg’s pain with alcohol before taking his leave. Staying the night at an inn is too public – innkeepers remember their guests and are often quick to part with details for a few coins – so Francis slopes into a nearby orchard instead, resting beneath the bare branches of an apple tree to examine his open wound once more.

Overhead, a magpie cackles.

Francis looks up, and the bird looks back at him with one intent eye, black and white and blue-green where it’s hit by the moon’s light. It hadn’t been there when he’d sat down.

“You’re up late, monsieur,” Francis says to the bird, wondering what it is that he’s wearing that’s shiny enough to have caught the flying thief’s attention. Scavengers fly closest to heaven, and Francis has lost enough glimmering things out of high open windows to know it’s not just those that walk on two legs that can spirit beautiful things away.

The magpie cackles again, a rough rude sound – and Francis frowns, suddenly, for behind the grating noise he can hear nothing but the breeze blowing leaves across the orchard’s floor. The bird has no heartbeat.

_ A familiar. _

Francis pushes himself up to his feet again – he will not willingly be spied upon by his pursuers, seen through the magpie’s eyes. He hadn’t even thought any of them were inherently skilled enough to _have_ a familiar of their own, truly, and the bird is an unpleasant surprise, for, unlike mortal witches, few magically-inclined vampires will send their familiar too far from them. Where the bird is its master will soon follow.

But then –

“Peace, vampire.” 

Footsteps among the leaves, and a human heartbeat. A red-haired woman, in the shadow of an apple tree where Francis _knows_ no-one had been before. He would have heard her approach, and since he had not –

(Even vampires cannot hear the sound of smoke taking form.)

_ Witch. _

“Madam witch,” Francis calls out, giving a half-gallant bow to the woman moving closer to his spot before gesturing to the bird over his head. The lady’s heartbeat is steady and strong – a vampire does not bother her. “This familiar is yours?”

“He is mine, for certes,” the woman says, and, a few feet away, stretches out her hand for her bird. White feathers fade to glossy black as the magpie takes to the air, and when he lands on her shoulder he sits in the form of an inquisitive blackbird, dark against the red of her hair. “But I am no witch, vampire. My family are a line of cunning-folk, and this is our land. What brings you here, inside my warning wards?”

(Francis does so _hate_ wards.)

White magic – cunning-folk practice white magic for the good of all, and are supposed to be prejudiced against none. Hope flares inside Francis at the realisation; witches are troublesome by nature and he is too tired for a confrontation – this woman should let him go peacefully by. “My apologies, Lady; I meant no offence. I was in need of rest and came into this orchard unknowing of whom it belonged to.”

“You couldn’t rest in town?” The cunning-woman comes closer still and Francis sees her features clearly – pale-faced and soft-mouthed, older but beautiful, with laugh-lines creased at the corner of her green eyes. She has lived well and wisely, this one (and had she been less magically-inclined, he’d have propositioned her too. Past run-ins with magic folk have warned him against that action though – curses are no fun for vampires when they can last decades longer than one mortal life). “You are injured.”

“My leg,” Francis explains, waving a hand down at where red is beginning to seep through his trousers once more. “I have a bullet lodged in it that would raise too many questions in town were I to see a doctor.”

“Can you walk?”

“I can run, Lady, but that does not mean I wish to do so.”

“Then you can come with me to my home, and stop bleeding on my trees.” The cunning-woman nods her head, determinedly deciding for Francis, and her blackbird departs swiftly into the night – no doubt back to the home she spoke of. A woman as lovely as this one would have people waiting for her. “My husband or one of my children can remove the bullet for you, and you may shelter with us the morrow. We have entertained vampires in worse states than you before.”

“Lady?” Francis asks, surprised. He has no doubts about the situation he’s in – he’s injured, tired and hungry and therefore _dangerous_ , and this strange woman invites him into her family home. “Lady, I do not wish to impose-”

“A favour is no imposition,” Francis’ comments are waved off, and the woman extends a hand to help Francis out of his slouch against the apple tree. She is truly a beautiful blessing in disguise, for Francis cannot hear a lie in her words, an angel in the apple orchard, a dying God’s last grace. “This is what I do.”

_ “Merci beaucoup _ ,” Francis murmurs, and thankfully accepts the assistance his kind hostess provides, somewhat stiff after sitting in the cold dirt. Perhaps he can find a new faith in the world after all. And in heaven above, if it can send someone like him a saviour. “I am eternally grateful.”


End file.
